Aeschylus The Suppliants Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? In the play, the Danaids, the fifty daughters of Danaus, founder of Argos, flee a forced marriage to their cousins in Egypt. What happened when they fled? They turn to King Pelasgus of Argos for protection, Did he protect them? Pelasgus refuses until the people of Argos weigh in on the decision, a distinctly democratic move on the part of the king. Did they make it out alive in the story? The people decide that the Danaids deserve protection, and they are allowed within the walls of Argos despite Egyptian protests. Are there more people in the story? Aegyptus, What is his part in the story? Danaus rules Argos. He negotiates a peace settlement with Aegyptus, as a condition of which, his fifty daughters will marry the fifty sons of Aegyptus. Was he a good guy in the story? I don't know. What parts of this article most interested you? forty-nine of the Danaids killed their husbands as ordered; Hypermnestra, however, loved her husband Lynceus, and thus spared his life and helped him to escape.
Why were they ordered to kill their husbands?
Why were the Danaids ordered to kill their husbands?
Aeschylus continued his emphasis on the polis with The Suppliants in 463 BC (Hiketides), which pays tribute to the democratic undercurrents running through Athens in advance of the establishment of a democratic government in 461. In the play, the Danaids, the fifty daughters of Danaus, founder of Argos, flee a forced marriage to their cousins in Egypt. They turn to King Pelasgus of Argos for protection, but Pelasgus refuses until the people of Argos weigh in on the decision, a distinctly democratic move on the part of the king. The people decide that the Danaids deserve protection, and they are allowed within the walls of Argos despite Egyptian protests.  The 1952 publication of Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 2256 fr. 3 confirmed a long-assumed (because of The Suppliants' cliffhanger ending) Danaid trilogy, whose constituent plays are generally agreed to be The Suppliants, The Egyptians and The Danaids. A plausible reconstruction of the trilogy's last two-thirds runs thus: In The Egyptians, the Argive-Egyptian war threatened in the first play has transpired. During the course of the war, King Pelasgus has been killed, and Danaus rules Argos. He negotiates a peace settlement with Aegyptus, as a condition of which, his fifty daughters will marry the fifty sons of Aegyptus. Danaus secretly informs his daughters of an oracle predicting that one of his sons-in-law would kill him; he therefore orders the Danaids to murder their husbands on their wedding night. His daughters agree. The Danaids would open the day after the wedding.  In short order, it is revealed that forty-nine of the Danaids killed their husbands as ordered; Hypermnestra, however, loved her husband Lynceus, and thus spared his life and helped him to escape. Angered by his daughter's disobedience, Danaus orders her imprisonment and, possibly, her execution. In the trilogy's climax and denouement, Lynceus reveals himself to Danaus, and kills him (thus fulfilling the oracle). He and Hypermnestra will establish a ruling dynasty in Argos. The other forty-nine Danaids are absolved of their murderous crime, and married off to unspecified Argive men. The satyr play following this trilogy was titled Amymone, after one of the Danaids. CANNOTANSWER
Danaus secretly informs his daughters of an oracle predicting that one of his sons-in-law would kill him;
Aeschylus (, ;  ; c. 525/524 – c. 456/455 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian, and is often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is largely based on inferences made from reading his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in the theatre and allowed conflict among them. Formerly, characters interacted only with the chorus.

Only seven of his estimated seventy to ninety plays have survived. There is a long-standing debate regarding the authorship of one of them, Prometheus Bound, with some scholars arguing that it may be the work of his son Euphorion. Fragments from other plays have survived in quotations, and more continue to be discovered on Egyptian papyri. These fragments often give further insights into Aeschylus' work. He was probably the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy. His Oresteia is the only extant ancient example. At least one of his plays was influenced by the Persians' second invasion of Greece (480–479 BC). This work, The Persians, is one of very few classical Greek tragedies concerned with contemporary events, and the only one extant. The significance of the war with Persia was so great to Aeschylus and the Greeks that his epitaph commemorates his participation in the Greek victory at Marathon while making no mention of his success as a playwright.

Life

Aeschylus was born in c. 525 BC in Eleusis, a small town about 27 km northwest of Athens, in the fertile valleys of western Attica. Some scholars argue that his date of birth may be based on counting back forty years from his first victory in the Great Dionysia. His family was wealthy and well established. His father, Euphorion, was a member of the Eupatridae, the ancient nobility of Attica. But this might be a fiction invented by the ancients to account for the grandeur of Aeschylus' plays.

As a youth, Aeschylus worked at a vineyard until, according to the 2nd-century AD geographer Pausanias, the god Dionysus visited him in his sleep and commanded him to turn his attention to the nascent art of tragedy. As soon as he woke, he began to write a tragedy, and his first performance took place in 499 BC, when he was 26 years old. He won his first victory at the City Dionysia in 484 BC.

In 510 BC, when Aeschylus was 15 years old, Cleomenes I expelled the sons of Peisistratus from Athens, and Cleisthenes came to power. Cleisthenes' reforms included a system of registration that emphasized the importance of the deme over family tradition. In the last decade of the 6th century, Aeschylus and his family were living in the deme of Eleusis.

The Persian Wars played a large role in Aeschylus' life and career. In 490 BC, he and his brother Cynegeirus fought to defend Athens against the invading army of Darius I of Persia at the Battle of Marathon. The Athenians emerged triumphant, and the victory was celebrated across the city-states of Greece. Cynegeirus was killed while trying to prevent a Persian ship retreating from the shore, for which his countrymen extolled him as a hero.

In 480 BC, Aeschylus was called into military service again, together with his younger brother Ameinias, against Xerxes I's invading forces at the Battle of Salamis. Aeschylus also fought at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC. Ion of Chios was a witness for Aeschylus' war record and his contribution in Salamis. Salamis holds a prominent place in The Persians, his oldest surviving play, which was performed in 472 BC and won first prize at the Dionysia.

Aeschylus was one of many Greeks who were initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, an ancient cult of Demeter based in his home town of Eleusis. Initiates gained secret knowledge through these rites, likely concerning the afterlife. Firm details of specific rites are sparse, as members were sworn under the penalty of death not to reveal anything about the Mysteries to non-initiates. Nevertheless, according to Aristotle, Aeschylus was accused of asebeia for revealing some of the cult's secrets on stage.

Other sources claim that an angry mob tried to kill Aeschylus on the spot but he fled the scene. Heracleides of Pontus asserts that the audience tried to stone Aeschylus. Aeschylus took refuge at the altar in the orchestra of the Theater of Dionysus. He pleaded ignorance at his trial. He was acquitted, with the jury sympathetic to the military service of him and his brothers during the Persian Wars. According to the 2nd-century AD author Aelian, Aeschylus' younger brother Ameinias helped to acquit Aeschylus by showing the jury the stump of the hand he had lost at Salamis, where he was voted bravest warrior. The truth is that the award for bravery at Salamis went not to Aeschylus' brother but to Ameinias of Pallene.

Aeschylus travelled to Sicily once or twice in the 470s BC, having been invited by Hiero I, tyrant of Syracuse, a major Greek city on the eastern side of the island. He produced The Women of Aetna during one of these trips (in honor of the city founded by Hieron), and restaged his Persians. By 473 BC, after the death of Phrynichus, one of his chief rivals, Aeschylus was the yearly favorite in the Dionysia, winning first prize in nearly every competition. In 472 BC, Aeschylus staged the production that included the Persians, with Pericles serving as choregos.

Personal life
Aeschylus married and had two sons, Euphorion and Euaeon, both of whom became tragic poets. Euphorion won first prize in 431 BC in competition against both Sophocles and Euripides. A nephew of Aeschylus, Philocles (his sister's son), was also a tragic poet, and won first prize in the competition against Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. Aeschylus had at least two brothers, Cynegeirus and Ameinias.

Death

In 458 BC, Aeschylus returned to Sicily for the last time, visiting the city of Gela, where he died in 456 or 455 BC. Valerius Maximus wrote that he was killed outside the city by a tortoise dropped by an eagle (possibly a lammergeier or Cinereous vulture, which do open tortoises for eating by dropping them on hard objects) which had mistaken his head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell. Pliny, in his Naturalis Historiæ, adds that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avoid a prophecy that he would be killed by a falling object, but this story may be legendary and due to a misunderstanding of the iconography on Aeschylus's tomb. Aeschylus' work was so respected by the Athenians that after his death his tragedies were the only ones allowed to be restaged in subsequent competitions. His sons Euphorion and Euæon and his nephew Philocles also became playwrights.

The inscription on Aeschylus' gravestone makes no mention of his theatrical renown, commemorating only his military achievements:

According to Castoriadis, the inscription on his grave signifies the primary importance of "belonging to the City" (polis), of the solidarity that existed within the collective body of citizen-soldiers.

Works

The seeds of Greek drama were sowed in religious festivals for the gods, chiefly Dionysus, the god of wine. During Aeschylus' lifetime, dramatic competitions became part of the City Dionysia, held in spring. The festival opened with a procession which was followed by a competition of boys singing dithyrambs, and all culminated in a pair of dramatic competitions. The first competition Aeschylus would have participated in involved three playwrights each presenting three tragedies and one satyr play. Such format is called a continuous tragic tetralogy. It allowed Aeschylus to explore the human and theological and cosmic dimensions of a mythic sequence, developing it in successive phases. A second competition involving five comedic playwrights followed, and the winners of both competitions were chosen by a panel of judges.

Aeschylus entered many of these competitions, and various ancient sources attribute between seventy and ninety plays to him. Only seven tragedies attributed to him have survived intact: The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliants, the trilogy known as The Oresteia (the three tragedies Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides), and Prometheus Bound (whose authorship is disputed). With the exception of this last play – the success of which is uncertain – all of Aeschylus's extant tragedies are known to have won first prize at the City Dionysia.

The Alexandrian Life of Aeschylus claims that he won the first prize at the City Dionysia thirteen times. This compares favorably with Sophocles' reported eighteen victories (with a substantially larger catalogue, an estimated 120 plays), and dwarfs the five victories of Euripides, who is thought to have written roughly 90 plays.

Trilogies
One hallmark of Aeschylean dramaturgy appears to have been his tendency to write connected trilogies in which each play serves as a chapter in a continuous dramatic narrative. The Oresteia is the only extant example of this type of connected trilogy, but there is evidence that Aeschylus often wrote such trilogies. The satyr plays that followed his tragic trilogies also drew from myth.

The satyr play Proteus, which followed the Oresteia, treated the story of Menelaus' detour in Egypt on his way home from the Trojan War. It is assumed, based on the evidence provided by a catalogue of Aeschylean play titles, scholia, and play fragments recorded by later authors, that three other extant plays of his were components of connected trilogies: Seven Against Thebes was the final play in an Oedipus trilogy, and The Suppliants and Prometheus Bound were each the first play in a Danaid trilogy and Prometheus trilogy, respectively. Scholars have also suggested several completely lost trilogies, based on known play titles. A number of these treated myths about the Trojan War. One, collectively called the Achilleis, comprised Myrmidons, Nereids and Phrygians (alternately, The Ransoming of Hector).

Another trilogy apparently recounted the entrance of the Trojan ally Memnon into the war, and his death at the hands of Achilles (Memnon and The Weighing of Souls being two components of the trilogy). The Award of the Arms, The Phrygian Women, and The Salaminian Women suggest a trilogy about the madness and subsequent suicide of the Greek hero Ajax. Aeschylus seems to have written about Odysseus' return to Ithaca after the war (including his killing of his wife Penelope's suitors and its consequences) in a trilogy consisting of The Soul-raisers, Penelope, and The Bone-gatherers. Other suggested trilogies touched on the myth of Jason and the Argonauts (Argô, Lemnian Women, Hypsipylê), the life of Perseus (The Net-draggers, Polydektês, Phorkides), the birth and exploits of Dionysus (Semele, Bacchae, Pentheus), and the aftermath of the war portrayed in Seven Against Thebes (Eleusinians, Argives (or Argive Women), Sons of the Seven).

Surviving plays

The Persians (472 BC)

The Persians (Persai) is the earliest of Aeschylus' extant plays. It was performed in 472 BC. It was based on Aeschylus' own experiences, specifically the Battle of Salamis. It is unique among surviving Greek tragedies in that it describes a recent historical event. The Persians focuses on the popular Greek theme of hubris and blames Persia's loss on the pride of its king.

It opens with the arrival of a messenger in Susa, the Persian capital, bearing news of the catastrophic Persian defeat at Salamis, to Atossa, the mother of the Persian King Xerxes. Atossa then travels to the tomb of Darius, her husband, where his ghost appears, to explain the cause of the defeat. It is, he says, the result of Xerxes' hubris in building a bridge across the Hellespont, an action which angered the gods. Xerxes appears at the end of the play, not realizing the cause of his defeat, and the play closes to lamentations by Xerxes and the chorus.

Seven Against Thebes (467 BC)

Seven against Thebes (Hepta epi Thebas) was performed in 467 BC. It has the contrasting theme of the interference of the gods in human affairs. Another theme, with which Aeschylus' would continually involve himself, makes its first known appearance in this play, namely that the polis was a key development of human civilization.

The play tells the story of Eteocles and Polynices, the sons of the shamed king of Thebes, Oedipus. Eteocles and Polynices agree to share and alternate the throne of the city. After the first year, Eteocles refuses to step down. Polynices therefore undertakes war. The pair kill each other in single combat, and the original ending of the play consisted of lamentations for the dead brothers. But a new ending was added to the play some fifty years later: Antigone and Ismene mourn their dead brothers, a messenger enters announcing an edict prohibiting the burial of Polynices, and Antigone declares her intention to defy this edict. The play was the third in a connected Oedipus trilogy. The first two plays were Laius and Oedipus. The concluding satyr play was The Sphinx.

The Suppliants (463 BC)

Aeschylus continued his emphasis on the polis with The Suppliants (Hiketides) in 463 BC. The play gives tribute to the democratic undercurrents which were running through Athens and preceding the establishment of a democratic government in 461. The Danaids (50 daughters of Danaus, founder of Argos) flee a forced marriage to their cousins in Egypt. They turn to King Pelasgus of Argos for protection, but Pelasgus refuses until the people of Argos weigh in on the decision (a distinctly democratic move on the part of the king). The people decide that the Danaids deserve protection and are allowed within the walls of Argos despite Egyptian protests.

A Danaid trilogy had long been assumed because of The Suppliants''' cliffhanger ending. This was confirmed by the 1952 publication of Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 2256 fr. 3. The constituent plays are generally agreed to be The Suppliants and The Egyptians and The Danaids. A plausible reconstruction of the trilogy's last two-thirds runs thus: In The Egyptians, the Argive-Egyptian war threatened in the first play has transpired. King Pelasgus was killed during the war, and Danaus rules Argos. Danaus negotiates a settlement with Aegyptus, a condition of which requires his 50 daughters to marry the 50 sons of Aegyptus. Danaus secretly informs his daughters of an oracle which predicts that one of his sons-in-law would kill him. He orders the Danaids to murder their husbands therefore on their wedding night. His daughters agree. The Danaids would open the day after the wedding.

It is revealed that 49 of the 50 Danaids killed their husbands. Hypermnestra did not kill her husband, Lynceus, and helped him  escape. Danaus is angered by his daughter's disobedience and orders her imprisonment and possibly execution. In the trilogy's climax and dénouement, Lynceus reveals himself to Danaus and kills him, thus fulfilling the oracle. He and Hypermnestra will establish a ruling dynasty in Argos. The other 49 Danaids are absolved of their murders, and married off to unspecified Argive men. The satyr play following this trilogy was titled Amymone, after one of the Danaids.

The Oresteia (458 BC)

Besides a few missing lines, the Oresteia of 458 BC is the only complete trilogy of Greek plays by any playwright still extant (of Proteus, the satyr play which followed, only fragments are known). Agamemnon and The Libation Bearers (Choephoroi) and The Eumenides together tell the violent story of the family of Agamemnon, king of Argos.

Agamemnon

Aeschylus begins in Greece, describing the return of King Agamemnon from his victory in the Trojan War, from the perspective of the townspeople (the Chorus) and his wife, Clytemnestra. Dark foreshadowings build to the death of the king at the hands of his wife, who was angry that their daughter Iphigenia was killed so that the gods would restore the winds and allow the Greek fleet to sail to Troy. Clytemnestra was also unhappy that Agamemnon kept the Trojan prophetess Cassandra as his concubine. Cassandra foretells the murder of Agamemnon and of herself to the assembled townsfolk, who are horrified. She then enters the palace knowing that she cannot avoid her fate. The ending of the play includes a prediction of the return of Orestes, son of Agamemnon, who will seek to avenge his father.

The Libation BearersThe Libation Bearers opens with Orestes' arrival at Agamemnon's tomb, from exile in Phocis. Electra meets Orestes there. They plan revenge against Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus. Clytemnestra's account of a nightmare in which she gives birth to a snake is recounted by the chorus. This leads her to order her daughter, Electra, to pour libations on Agamemnon's tomb (with the assistance of libation bearers) in hope of making amends. Orestes enters the palace pretending to bear news of his own death. Clytemnestra calls in Aegisthus to learn the news. Orestes kills them both. Orestes is then beset by the Furies, who avenge the murders of kin in Greek mythology.

The Eumenides
The third play addresses the question of Orestes' guilt. The Furies drive Orestes from Argos and into the wilderness. He makes his way to the temple of Apollo and begs Apollo to drive the Furies away. Apollo had encouraged Orestes to kill Clytemnestra, so he bears some of the guilt for the murder. Apollo sends Orestes to the temple of Athena with Hermes as a guide.

The Furies track him down, and Athena steps in and declares that a trial is necessary. Apollo argues Orestes' case, and after the judges (including Athena) deliver a tie vote, Athena announces that Orestes is acquitted. She renames the Furies  The Eumenides (The Good-spirited, or Kindly Ones), and extols the importance of reason in the development of laws. As in The Suppliants, the ideals of a democratic Athens are praised.

Prometheus Bound (date disputed)Prometheus Bound is attributed to Aeschylus by ancient authorities. Since the late 19th century, however, scholars have increasingly doubted this ascription, largely on stylistic grounds. Its production date is also in dispute, with theories ranging from the 480s BC to as late as the 410s.

The play consists mostly of static dialogue. The Titan Prometheus is bound to a rock throughout, which is his punishment from the Olympian Zeus for providing fire to humans. The god Hephaestus and the Titan Oceanus and the chorus of Oceanids all express sympathy for Prometheus' plight. Prometheus is met by Io, a fellow victim of Zeus' cruelty. He prophesies her future travels, revealing that one of her descendants will free Prometheus. The play closes with Zeus sending Prometheus into the abyss because Prometheus will not tell him of a potential marriage which could prove Zeus' downfall.Prometheus Bound seems to have been the first play in a trilogy, the Prometheia. In the second play, Prometheus Unbound, Heracles frees Prometheus from his chains and kills the eagle that had been sent daily to eat Prometheus' perpetually regenerating liver (then believed the source of feeling). We learn that Zeus has released the other Titans which he imprisoned at the conclusion of the Titanomachy, perhaps foreshadowing his eventual reconciliation with Prometheus.

In the trilogy's conclusion, Prometheus the Fire-Bringer, it seems that the Titan finally warns Zeus not to sleep with the sea nymph Thetis, for she is fated to beget a son greater than the father. Not wishing to be overthrown, Zeus marries Thetis off to the mortal Peleus. The product of that union is Achilles, Greek hero of the Trojan War. After reconciling with Prometheus, Zeus probably inaugurates a festival in his honor at Athens.

Lost plays
Of Aeschylus' other plays, only titles and assorted fragments are known. There are enough fragments (along with comments made by later authors and scholiasts) to produce rough synopses for some plays.

Myrmidons
This play was based on books 9 and 16 of the Iliad. Achilles sits in silent indignation over his humiliation at Agamemnon's hands for most of the play. Envoys from the Greek army attempt to reconcile Achilles to Agamemnon, but he yields only to his friend Patroclus, who then battles the Trojans in Achilles' armour. The bravery and death of Patroclus are reported in a messenger's speech, which is followed by mourning.

Nereids
This play was based on books 18 and 19 and 22 of the Iliad. It follows the Daughters of Nereus, the sea god, who lament Patroclus' death. A messenger tells how Achilles (perhaps reconciled to Agamemnon and the Greeks) slew Hector.

Phrygians, or Hector's Ransom
After a brief discussion with Hermes, Achilles sits in silent mourning over Patroclus. Hermes then brings in King Priam of Troy, who wins over Achilles and ransoms his son's body in a spectacular coup de théâtre. A scale is brought on stage and Hector's body is placed in one scale and gold in the other. The dynamic dancing of the chorus of Trojans when they enter with Priam is reported by Aristophanes.

Niobe
The children of Niobe, the heroine, have been slain by Apollo and Artemis because Niobe had gloated that she had more children than their mother, Leto. Niobe sits in silent mourning on stage during most of the play. In the Republic, Plato quotes the line "God plants a fault in mortals when he wills to destroy a house utterly."

These are the remaining 71 plays ascribed to Aeschylus which are known to us:AlcmeneAmymoneThe Archer-WomenThe Argivian WomenThe Argo, also titled The RowersAtalantaAthamasAttendants of the Bridal ChamberAward of the ArmsThe BacchaeThe BassaraeThe Bone-GatherersThe CabeiroiCallistoThe Carians, also titled EuropaCercyonChildren of HerculesCirceThe Cretan WomenCycnusThe DanaidsDaughters of HeliosDaughters of PhorcysThe DescendantsThe EdoniansThe EgyptiansThe EscortsGlaucus of PontusGlaucus of PotniaeHypsipyleIphigeniaIxionLaiusThe Lemnian WomenThe LionLycurgusMemnonThe Men of EleusisThe MessengersThe MyrmidonsThe MysiansNemeaThe Net-DraggersThe Nurses of DionysusOrethyiaPalamedesPenelopePentheusPerrhaibidesPhiloctetesPhineusThe Phrygian WomenPolydectesThe PriestessesPrometheus the Fire-BearerPrometheus the Fire-KindlerPrometheus UnboundProteusSemele, also titled The Water-BearersSisyphus the RunawaySisyphus the Stone-RollerThe Spectators, also titled Athletes of the Isthmian GamesThe SphinxThe Spirit-RaisersTelephusThe Thracian WomenWeighing of SoulsWomen of Aetna (two versions)Women of SalamisXantriaeThe YouthsInfluence
Influence on Greek drama and culture

The theatre was just beginning to evolve when Aeschylus started writing for it. Earlier playwrights such as Thespis had already expanded the cast to include an actor who was able to interact with the chorus. Aeschylus added a second actor, allowing for greater dramatic variety, while the chorus played a less important role. He is sometimes credited with introducing skenographia, or scene-decoration, though Aristotle gives this distinction to Sophocles. Aeschylus is also said to have made the costumes more elaborate and dramatic, and made his actors wear platform boots (cothurni) to make them more visible to the audience. According to a later account of Aeschylus' life, the chorus of Furies in the first performance of the Eumenides were so frightening when they entered that children fainted and patriarchs urinated and pregnant women went into labour.

Aeschylus wrote his plays in verse. No violence is performed onstage. The plays have a remoteness from daily life in Athens, relating stories about the gods, or being set, like The Persians, far away. Aeschylus' work has a strong moral and religious emphasis. The Oresteia trilogy concentrated on humans' position in the cosmos relative to the gods and divine law and divine punishment.

Aeschylus' popularity is evident in the praise that the comic playwright Aristophanes gives him in The Frogs, produced some 50 years after Aeschylus' death. Aeschylus appears as a character in the play and claims, at line 1022, that his Seven against Thebes "made everyone watching it to love being warlike". He claims, at lines 1026–7, that with The Persians he "taught the Athenians to desire always to defeat their enemies." Aeschylus goes on to say, at lines 1039ff., that his plays inspired the Athenians to be brave and virtuous.

Influence outside Greek culture
Aeschylus' works were influential beyond his own time. Hugh Lloyd-Jones draws attention to Richard Wagner's reverence of Aeschylus. Michael Ewans argues in his Wagner and Aeschylus. The Ring and the Oresteia (London: Faber. 1982) that the influence was so great as to merit a direct character by character comparison between Wagner's Ring and Aeschylus's Oresteia. But a critic of that book, while not denying that Wagner read and respected Aeschylus, has described the arguments as unreasonable and forced.

J.T. Sheppard argues in the second half of his Aeschylus and Sophocles: Their Work and Influence that Aeschylus and Sophocles have played a major part in the formation of dramatic literature from the Renaissance to the present, specifically in French and Elizabethan drama. He also claims that their influence went beyond just drama and applies to literature in general, citing Milton and the Romantics.

Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), a trilogy of three plays set in America after the Civil War, is modeled after the Oresteia. Before writing his acclaimed trilogy, O'Neill had been developing a play about Aeschylus, and he noted that Aeschylus "so changed the system of the tragic stage that he has more claim than anyone else to be regarded as the founder (Father) of Tragedy."

During his presidential campaign in 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy quoted the Edith Hamilton translation of Aeschylus on the night of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Kennedy was notified of King's murder before a campaign stop in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was warned not to attend the event due to fears of rioting from the mostly African-American crowd. Kennedy insisted on attending and delivered an impromptu speech that delivered news of King's death. Acknowledging the audience's emotions, Kennedy referred to his own grief at the murder of Martin Luther King and, quoting a passage from the play Agamemnon (in translation), said: "My favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote: 'Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.' What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness; but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black ... Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world." The quotation from Aeschylus was later inscribed on a memorial at the gravesite of Robert Kennedy following his own assassination.

Editions
Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Aeschyli Tragoediae. Editio maior, Berlin 1914.
Gilbert Murray, Aeschyli Septem Quae Supersunt Tragoediae. Editio Altera, Oxford 1955.
Denys Page, Aeschyli Septem Quae Supersunt Tragoediae, Oxford 1972.
Martin L. West, Aeschyli Tragoediae cum incerti poetae Prometheo, 2nd ed., Stuttgart/Leipzig 1998.
The first translation of the seven plays into English was by Robert Potter in 1779, using blank verse for the iambic trimeters and rhymed verse for the choruses, a convention adopted by most translators for the next century.
Anna Swanwick produced a verse translation in English of all seven surviving plays as The Dramas of Aeschylus in 1886 full text
Stefan Radt (ed.), Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Vol. III: Aeschylus (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009) (Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, 3).
Alan H. Sommerstein (ed.), Aeschylus, Volume II, Oresteia: Agamemnon. Libation-bearers. Eumenides. 146 (Cambridge, Massachusetts/London: Loeb Classical Library, 2009); Volume III, Fragments. 505 (Cambridge, Massachusetts/London: Loeb Classical Library, 2008).

 See also 
 2876 Aeschylus, an asteroid named for him
 Ancient Greek literature
 Ancient Greek mythology
 Ancient Greek religion
 Battle of Marathon
 Classical Greece
 Dionysia
 Music of ancient Greece
 Theatre of ancient Greece
 "Live by the sword, die by the sword"

Notes

Citations

References

Bierl, A. Die Orestie des Aischylos auf der modernen Bühne: Theoretische Konzeptionen und ihre szenische Realizierung (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1997)
Cairns, D., V. Liapis, Dionysalexandros: Essays on Aeschylus and His Fellow Tragedians in Honour of Alexander F. Garvie (Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2006)

Deforge, B. Une vie avec Eschyle. Vérité des mythes (Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2010)

Lefkowitz, Mary (1981). The Lives of the Greek Poets. University of North Carolina Press

— (2002). Greek Drama and Dramatists. London: Routledge Press. 

Summers, David (2007). Vision, Reflection, and Desire in Western Painting. University of North Carolina Press
Thomson, George (1973) Aeschylus and Athens: A Study in the Social Origin of Drama. London: Lawrence and Wishart (4th edition)

Vellacott, Philip, (1961). Prometheus Bound and Other Plays: Prometheus Bound, Seven Against Thebes, and The Persians. New York: Penguin Classics. 

Zeitlin, Froma (1982). Under the sign of the shield: semiotics and Aeschylus' Seven against Thebes. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2nd ed. 2009 (Greek studies: interdisciplinary approaches)
Zetlin, Froma (1996). "The dynamics of misogyny: myth and mythmaking in Aeschylus's Oresteia", in Froma Zeitlin, Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 87–119.
Zeitlin, Froma (1996). "The politics of Eros in the Danaid trilogy of Aeschylus", in Froma Zeitlin, Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 123–171.

External links

Selected Poems of Aeschylus
Aeschylus-related materials at the Perseus Digital Library
Complete syntax diagrams at Alpheios
Online English Translations of Aeschylus
Photo of a fragment of The Net-pullers

"Aeschylus, I: Persians" from the Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press
"Aeschylus, II: The Oresteia" from the Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press
"Aeschylus, III: Fragments" from the Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press

 
5th-century BC Greek people
5th-century BC writers
520s BC births
450s BC deaths
Year of birth uncertain
Year of death uncertain
Tragic poets
Ancient Greeks accused of sacrilege
Greek people of the Greco-Persian Wars
Battle of Marathon
Accidental deaths in Italy
Deaths due to animal attacks
Guardianship in Francoist Spain (1939-1975) and the democratic transition (1975-1985) was a system which provided husbands and fathers with tremendous legal control over women. Male members of the family were able to transfer legal control of their daughters over to the state. One of the developments after the Civil War was the restoration of the Civil Code of 1889 by the Franco regime. This made women into virtual slaves to their husbands and fathers with men controlling not only the custody of their children, but their bank accounts, contracts, nationality and residency. Women did not reach the age of majority until 21, 25 if they were unmarried or not in a convent. Husbands and fathers could kill their wives and daughters for committing adultery or having sex outside marriage. Minor reforms were made in the 1950s and 1960s, largely as a result of economic pressures. 

Reforms around eliminating guardianship accelerated in the 1970s, before the death of Franco. They included the relinguishment of controls over nationality, children's custody and inheritance, while men no longer automatically became the default head of household. Reforms accelerated in the democratic transition period. The 1978 Spanish constitution gave men and women equality under the law, effectively ending the Franco regime's system of guardianship for single women. For married women, this system would remain in place after the end of the transition period.

Francoist period (1939 - 1975)

1930s Francoist Spain 
The Civil Code of 1889 was restored by the Franco regime. This code saw the re-introduction of guardianship and subordination of women into civil law. It also saw the age of majority changed to 23, or 25 if they had not left their parents' home to marry or join a convent. Fuero del Trabajo of 1938 was the law which prevented married women from working in workshops or factories. The goal was to make women free to tend to their husband's needs inside their household.

The rights of a husband over his wife were so strict that they amounted to a kind of slavery. The laws treated women as if they were permanent minors, in the custody of their husbands.  It treated them as if they were insane or demented. Under the law, women were required to have the same nationality and residency as their husbands. Women had to submit to the authority of their husbands. Women did not have legal custody of their children as full custody belonged only to husbands. The only exception was if a woman was widowed, and remarrying would mean custody would be transferred to her new husband. Women could not sign contracts without the consent of their husbands. They could not open a bank account without their husband's consent. They had to leave work once they married. Women's marital assets were considered paraphernalia, which they could not manage or sell without their husband's consent. Women could not accept inheritances.

1940s 
Daughters had limited options to leave their father's households in the 1940s. They could only leave if one of their parents died and then remarried. Even then girls needed permission from a judge, and a place to live in the house of another relative. The Labor Regulation Act of 1942 said women had to sign a voluntary dismissal form within a month of being married that resulted in them losing their job. After that, newly married women had to wait two years before they could re-enter the workforce and only then, if they had permission from their husband. A 1943 law changed the age of majority for single women to 21. Despite turning 21, women could not leave the home at that age unless their fathers gave permission; they would have to wait until they were 25. The only exception was if a woman married, or entered a convent. Under the Labor Contracts Act of 1944 women needed permission from their husband before they were able to sign an employment contract. In Barcelona during the 1940s, women had to be accompanied by men such as fathers, brothers or husbands if they wanted to be out on the street at night; they could not go out unaccompanied. This was a national policy that said women could not go out alone, and needed to be accompanied by a male family member.

The 1944 Penal Code allowed for blood revenge for adultery, but only in cases where a husband caught his wife in the sexual act of committing adultery, not when a wife caught her husband. The law also stated under Article 438 that parents could kill their daughter if she was 22 years old or younger, and they caught her having sex with a man. Protests had taken place in the 1920s by women opposed to earlier versions of the law. Husbands and parents were still punished under the law for these killings, but the consequences were small and mostly included only a man being forced to leave his home and live at least 25 kilometers away for a few years. There was no punishment if the husband only seriously injured his wife. The code specified, "The husband who, if his wife is caught in adultery and he kills the woman or the adulterer on the spot or causes them one of the serious injuries, will be punished with banishment. If he causes them second-class injuries, he will be free of punishment. These rules are applicable to parents in the same circumstances, with respect to their daughters under twenty-three years of age and their corruptors, as long as they have been living in their father's house."

Teenage girls could become wards of the state through Patronato de Protección a la Mujer. Starting in 1941 and until 1985, girls were taken to centers run by nuns as part of the state's objective of rehabilitating the "fallen". Some of these girls were dropped off by parents who no longer wanted to care of them, as in the case of Raquel Castillo. Some girls were put into state custody because they were denounced by family members. Marian Torralbo was denounced by her brother, a member of Acción Católica, for partying. All were incapacitated without a trial. Women could not leave in many cases until they were 25-years-old, the age when they were legally adult women.

Girls put into these reformatories were subject to virginity tests conducted by nuns. This was done on a daily basis, with girls forced to sit on a hospital bed where a doctor would ask them if they were a virgin. After they said yes, the doctor would imply they were liars and then put a stick up a girl's vagina to check without her consent. Many girls became hysterical during this process.

Prostitutes were held at facilities run by nuns through Patronato de Protección a la Mujer from 1941 to 1985. They were always a minority, representing between 7 and 10% of the population. They would be put into cells next to girls abandoned by their families, spending only a few nights. According to Carlos Álvarez, researcher at the University of the Basque Country, "Their confinement fulfilled two objectives: on the one hand to separate them from the rest of society so that they did not influence it, and on the other hand to be 'rehabilitated', along the path of redemption."

1950s 

The economic situation in the 1950s led to a revisiting of the Fuero del Trabajo. Spain was expanding its industrial activities and needed a workforce to support this. One of the easiest and cheapest ways to do that was to increase the number of women in the workforce. Economic needs of Spain were viewed as more important than ideological goals. Meaningful legal reforms for women were not covered under the Civil Code until the late 1950s and early 1960s. These changes were a result of pressure by women to bring the law more in line with cultural shifts in attitudes. One such amendment followed a newspaper article by Mercedes Formica about a man who stabbed his wife to death. The change in the 1889 Civil Code gave greater protections to married women. Other changes in law saw the home being redefined less as a husband's domain but rather a family domain. Married women were entitled to half a couple's common property, and husbands were required to obtain permission from their wives before selling the woman's half. When a widowed woman with children remarried, she was now allowed to keep custody of her children in the new marriage.

Laws on guardianship in Spain were not reformed until 24 April 1958. One reform meant that women could retain custody of their children if they were widowed and remarried, but only if the deceased husband specified this in his will. Another reform of the 1958 law meant that for the first time a husband could not sell or alienate marital property without his wife's consent. These, and changes around the custody of children, came about as a result of a concordat with the Vatican. Mercedes Formica, a member of Falange, was one of the major supporters of the 1958 Civil Code reforms reducing the restrictions placed on married Spanish women. Formica was active in developing a feminist consciousness in Madrid in this period.

Article 57 continued to be problematic in 1958, as it specified husbands must protect their wives. It established authority of men over women, and was used by men to justify gender violence that caused grievous harm to their wives. It established marriage as a dictatorship.

1960s 
Up until the mid-1960s, Franco's legal system gave husbands near total control over their wives. This did not change until women started playing a more central role in the Spanish economy. The 1961 Law on Political Rights was supported by Sección Feminina. This amendment to the law gave women in the workforce additional rights, recognizing the importance of their work. The law saw single women being entitled to a salary similar to that of her male peers working in the same job. Pilar Primo de Rivera commented, "The law rather than being feminist is, on the contrary, supportive of what men can give to women as the emptier glass. Why else would we want the man's salary to be sufficiently remunerative so that women, especially married woman, would not have to work out of necessity! I assure you that if family life was sufficiently endowed, 90% of women would not work. For us, it is much more convenient and more desirable to have all the problems solved. But there are many families not just in Spain but around the world that cannot dispense with working women, precisely because it ensures there is enough for their children's care and education, the primary goal of marriage." The law had one problem though in that married women still required permission from their husbands to accept a job.

The blood revenge law was rescinded in 1963, with husbands and parents no longer having the right to kill wives or daughters caught engaging in illicit sex acts. Many women and some men were in prison for adultery-related offenses. They were rarely talked about. Starting in 1975, before the death of Franco, women had started to mobilize by taking to the streets to demand the decriminalization of adultery.

Single pregnant teenage girls could be particularly vulnerable during this period, with the state assuming guardianship of them and their children at the Peña Grande maternity prison, officially known as Nuestra Señora de La Almudena, until the girls were 25. In some cases, the state would line these pregnant women in a row, bring in men who had paid a fee and allow them to choose among the woman for one to marry or work in his home; the women would never know this beforehand. The men would sometimes return the women they had selected, indicating they were not happy with their choice and then pick out a new woman. It was primarily from the Peña Grande maternity prison that the stolen babies were taken, with women continuing to be imprisoned there until 1984. The conditions at the state facility were so bad that girls would commit suicide by jumping off the top stairwell. María Ángeles Martínez was one woman kept at the Peña Grande facility while pregnant. She remembered her experience, commenting: "I entered as a 19-year-old, in August of 1975. I was an orphan and I had just gotten pregnant, so my sister-in-law, who wanted to get rid of me, told me 'get dressed we're going', and without my knowing where we were going, she brought me here." She described the nuns, "They told me what I was going to do with a daughter, how I was going to feed her, if they had thrown me out of the house, if I was a wretch, and she was going to be one too."  She described the process of giving birth, "I was in the dilatation room, and with half a head already out and they told me that I had to walk alone to the operating room and get on the gurney. I went with all the care, but she was born with a deformed skull. When they saw it, they stopped insisting I give her to them. I think that's why I did not lose my daughter."

1970-1975 
A reform in 1970 meant that women could prevent their husbands putting their children up for adoption without their consent. Law 31/1972 changed the law in respect to articles 320 and 321. It reduced the age of majority to 21 in all cases for women, and allowed women to act as an adult in civil life. This meant both men and women reached majority when they were 21. The law changed in 1972 to give women more freedom from their fathers. It allowed women 22 years old and older to leave the familial home without the consent of their parents.

The Association of Women Lawyers was created in Madrid in 1971. They eventually played an important role in the Codification Commission for the reform of Family Law. The last major legal reform for women occurred in May 1975, when men were stripped of their automatic head of household status, women no longer being required by law to obey them or being forced to take their husbands' nationality. The amendment in Article 62 stated, "Marriage does not restrict the capacity of one of the spouses to act." Article 63 removed the requirement that a wife obey her husband, and was amended to specify that both spouses had a mutual obligation to respect and protect each other. These changes meant women could accept inheritances, appear in court, and accept a job without the approval of their husbands. The changes also impacted who controlled matrimonial property. The law was also changed so that husbands were no longer married women's legal representatives by default.

Democratic transition period (1975 - 1985)

1975-1980 
Franco died in November 1975. His death brought about a slow process of reform over the next decade. One of the major revolutions of the 1978 Spanish constitution was that it gave men and women equality under the law. Cristina Almeida explained its importance stating, "What I knew and we all knew was that there were such obstacles that no matter how much the Constitution said that equality was decreed, it was not so easy to get it."  The advances for women in the constitution were largely a result of feminist women who continually took to the streets to demand equal rights. As women took no direct part in writing the new Spanish constitution, gender discrimination continued to exist within Spanish law.

The 1978 Constitution still enshrined some discrimination against women, specifically against married women, as Article 57 of the Civil Code stated: "The husband must protect the wife, and she must obey the husband." Despite many of the changes brought about during the transition, there was no way of establishing the number of women who were killed by their partners or husbands before the 1990s. The abuse and murder of women in Spain by their partners was a form of sexist terrorism and claimed more victims than ETA.

1980s 
Law 11/1981 made men and women equal in marriage. It ended the system under which the husband was in charge of conjugal property. Women could work without the consent of their husband, apply for a passport, open a bank account and get a drivers license. The new regulations were in line with United Nations guidelines. Children, on turning 18, now had a legal option to choose whether their father's or mother's surname came first. Law 30/1981 of 7 July also set a civil divorce process. If a family did not exercise an option to change the order of the names in their surname, the law defaulted to the father's surname as the first.

The law changed in 1985 in regard to girls taken into state custody, as it no longer allowed minors to be placed under the control of the state for their own protection. Following this, all remaining efforts for reform were terminated.

References 

Women in Francoist Spain
Women in the Spanish transition to democracy Hinoe uma (Japanese) or bing wu (Chinese; both written 丙午, meaning "fire horse" in Chinese) is the 43rd combination of the sexagenary cycle. Due to a superstition that girls born in such a year will grow up to kill their husbands, birthrates in Japan tend to see a sharp decline.

References

Chinese astrology
Superstitions of Japan